Schubert’s final Piano Sonata in B flat major, D 960, contains some of the most harmonically inventive music of the 19th century – and this from the pen of an undisputed master of harmonic innovation. It is like being taken on a walk where, again and again, one turns a corner to find an unexpected yet subtle change of colour, vista or shade.

Yet such walks are not without their dangers for the pianist, notably aimlessness, length and getting lost. As the culmination of her recital, Imogen Cooper navigated the peripatetic perils by maintaining serene focus on the melodic line, and through her sensibility to expressive nuance, which was finely tuned but never exaggerated or wilful.

Advertisement

The great exposition of the first movement seems to deliberately lose itself in remote keys before concluding with a new theme of mellow reflection. The development section darkened in mood, and, for a moment becomes obstinately focused on a repeated chord before being released for the return of the opening. Cooper brought a lifetime of experience to its expansive architecture.

One of Schubert’s admirers, Robert Schumann, coined one of music criticism’s great euphemisms – "heavenly length" – to describe this kind of approach to musical form. By contrast, the 18 short pieces of Schumann’s Davidsblundler Dances, heard in the first half, have more earthly brevity, like flashes of undeveloped inspiration born of eccentric fantasy.

Cooper was particularly persuasive in the quieter pieces, such as number 14 (Zart und singend – Tender and singing) with its intimate intermingling of line and dissonance. She has instinctive affinity for the expressive tone of this music, capturing a sense of narrative vigour in number 10 (Balladenmassig – in the manner of a ballad) like a storyteller of strong personality.

In general, the music was at its most telling in its quieter passages. In Schumann’s Novelette, Opus 21, No. 2 in D major, which opened the programme, the tone was light and somewhat lacking in bravura. Cooper introduced the Schubert Sonata in the second half with a rarity, Brahms’ arrangement for piano of the set of variations that make up the Andante ma Moderato movement of his String Sextet Opus 18. The sextet version has attractive severity, diluted here by freedom with the tempo.